I feel your pain. I have leveled LW a total of three times. I will never level it again. It just takes to much time or gold to level. Blizzard really needs to look at updating the armor making professions. Its takes may to many mats to level those professions from 0 to max. If they could do something like they did from going 525 to 600 that would help out a lot. The only thing I can tell you is just to keep at it. Hopefully you have a level 90 skinner with some good aoe abilities.

I know exactly what you're struggling with. It took me a few days of buying all the leather, skinning some on my own, and spamming trade with good offers to be able to get past 300. If you don't have the resources to do that, however, you're looking at many hours of tedious work until you're about BC-level.

The good news is that once you're at 300+, it's pretty smooth sailing. Wrath and Cata leathers were abundant and not very expensive on my server, and when you first learn the bracer enchant, you can spam it till it goes green (starts orange, gives a point reliably for 20-25-ish points, and costs just 1 eternium thread). MoP leather is dirt-cheap, so 500-600 will be the least of your worries.

I don't think LW was properly adjusted when professions were brought up to date a while ago. The Vanilla section is by far the worst, since items take 12-16 pieces of leather, and Vanilla leathers are anything but abundant. It may have made sense in Vanilla, when people leveled slowly and many farmed consistently for an income. It doesn't make sense now, when people outlevel areas extremely fast and tend to worry about professions once they're at higher levels.

Honestly if they just made a few of the rough patches' recipes grant extra points or just always get more skins per beast it would make such a huge difference. I leveled LW on a monk on the beta (also have a LW live though have not done 525-600 yet) and requested this sort of change but, alas, no luck.

I've leveled most professions and leatherworking is my least favorite by far. Even straight quest leveling with zero dungeon runs I was constantly backtracking to get the right type of leather. A little backtracking is not a big deal and most professions have to do it but it was pretty much every stage of leather except the first couple. Do dugeons or BGs and it's even worse.

The one that's giving me fits is how much savage leather I seem to need to get tot he point where I can use exotic leather (starting at what, 500ish?). I can go kill mobs for 30 minutes and get enough for 1-2 skill ups...and there's a huge gap in recipes too at that range.

I decided to level an alt with leatherworking and it's been better than I expected, especially, 300 to 425. I got lucky on the AH as with all the monks I was able to buy up the leather I needed over about a week. Even rugged wasn't too bad. I think heavy was the hardest piece.

But, man, if I'd had to farm it, I wouldn't have done. That's just a brutal, brutal process.

I just did LWing on MG horde Bamboola. Cost me 15k to get to 525. At least 10k of that was to go 1-300. I also had to have a skinner alt go and do large bits of thick and rugged leather to supplement what wasn't in the AH. It's AWFUL.

I'm leveling it now for the first time and it does seem much harder to farm than mining or herbs. Each 'node' has to be fought first instead of just click and when I mine I usually get several ore but with leather I've never gotten more than two and many kills one or even just 1/3 (scraps). I really enjoy making stuff and I can sell what I make faster than I can make it but even so the farming really is painful even for someone who usually finds farming herbs or ore to be relaxing.

They should add the chance of bonus leather to skinning for leather-workers like tailors get for cloth drops. Or reduce the amount of leather to make one item... it takes leather from eight whole bears to make one little vest?

I'm leveling my currently and can't belive how painful it is going by the guide i'm using i need about 400 savage leather and to skin you need to kill mobs and skin them most of the time getting 1 leather, mining and herbing you can run around finding nods not have to kill a single creature loot the nod getting 3 most of the time, your skinning unless you buy leather is like 100 levels on your leather working

I'm leveling it now for the first time and it does seem much harder to farm than mining or herbs. Each 'node' has to be fought first instead of just click and when I mine I usually get several ore but with leather I've never gotten more than two and many kills one or even just 1/3 (scraps).

Well, at lower levels, where you are alone, yes. Then again, you can AoE swarm if you wayy out lvl the mobs.

For the current levels, just park your skinner in an area where there are a lot of quest mobs to be skinned.

My lvl 85 Alt is a 600 skinner. I parked him in Valley of Blossoms near the Tigers/Turtles/Kodos around Nestingway quests.

I decided to get my LW up to date, so I don't have such a massive grind once I hit Cata and MoP.

Just got past Thick, that required an afternoon in the Badlands. At some points people were questing and leaving looted broodlings, so after checking that they weren't Skinners that helped a lot.

Time to go score a bunch of Rugged to get past 300- good to hear it gets better. I do seem to have a lot more Knothide and Borean leather in the bank than the other leathers I picked up while questing and levelling skinning.